Q+A | Thoughts on innovation and leadership from the region's top disruptive companies and organizations.

Walk through New York’s Times Square, an area so synonymous with the information economy that it is named after a newspaper, and it’s hard to miss the giant 32 story Thomson Reuters building, with its soaring video screens and sleek glass walls. While the global information company does have a significant presence in New York, and other historic news and information hubs like London and Hong Kong, one of its fastest-growing locations is in Carrolton, TX, just north of Dallas.

Brian Peccarelli, Chief Operating Officer, Customer Markets at Thomson Reuters has had a lot to do with that. A 35-year veteran of Thomson Reuters, Peccarelli has held a number of positions with the company, starting as a product accountant in 1984, and, earlier this year, being named Chief Operating Officer for all customer-facing operations. Peccarelli has called Dallas home for all of that time, and, as he climbed the ranks at Thomson Reuters, he has assembled a dream team of technologists, innovators, and business leaders who are redefining the way businesses of every type operate.

What is it about Dallas that makes it such a fast-growing hub for Thomson Reuters?

Thomson Reuters is a global information company. We help professionals working in complex business, such as law, tax, compliance, government, and media, make confident decisions based on trusted information and authoritative insight. To do that well, we need to be incredibly nimble, able to adapt our technologies and solutions rapidly as fast-moving regulation and other disruptions introduce new challenges. In Dallas, we are dialed into a world class talent pipeline that gives us the skillsets we need to do that, and an amazing transportation infrastructure that lets us physically get to any location on the world very quickly.

What kinds of positions have you been filling in Dallas?

This year alone, we’ve brought in eight senior business leaders—people who are running critical parts of our business—who are relocating from places as far-flung as Moscow and from established tech business centers like Silicon Valley, London, and New York. We’re also recruiting locally, drawing from the booming local tech sector and from colleges around the globe whose grads are beating a path to Dallas for its great business environment, thriving cultural scene, and its relatively low cost of living.

Are there any specific areas of technological innovation that you see showing the most potential right now?

We are living through an unprecedented period of disruption as massive regulatory and compliance changes that once brewed slowly over the course of decades are implemented overnight. Thankfully, new technologies are moving faster, allowing corporations to switch on a dime to keep pace with these changes. The most exciting areas we’re working on now are in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), where, for example, we recently launched the most advanced legal search technology available anywhere in the world, and in blockchain, where we are using distributed ledger technology to streamline global trade processing and tax auditing functions. But the really exciting thing is that none of these technologies is being developed in a vacuum. We’re building them right now today at enterprise scale to integrate directly into the IT backbones of the world’s largest companies. That’s what’s such a thrill for me. The work we’re doing in our product development labs today will change the way business is conducted tomorrow.

A version of this Thought Leaders article was first published in Dallas Innovates 2019—The Magazine.

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Dallas Innovates 2019—The Magazine explores the region as a rising tech hub that will shape the future of innovation. The theme of our second annual print publication, “A Breakout Moment,” explores why now is the time for the region to grab its place in the tech universe.

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